explorations and thoughts about the natural world

In my last post, I explored the origins of an alpine lake in North Cascades. The news cycle was especially terrible the day I wrote it, so I decided to leave out details about the causes and consequences of glacial retreat in North Cascades. But honestly, the causes and consequences are too great to ignore. It is no small irony that my insight and enjoyment into the formation of an alpine lake was inadvertently provided by people through human-caused climate change.

All glaciers in North Cascades are retreating and they’ve collectively lost over 50% of their mass during the last 100 years. This is directly due to a warming climate, a product of burning fossil fuels like coal and oil.

Banded Glacier in 1960 (left) and 2016 (right) in North Cascades National Park.

Unless you’ve been living under one of those glaciers for the past century, you might’ve heard there’s an election next week and voting has begun in many states. While casting our votes, we have an opportunity to elect representatives who will work to mitigate climate change. But, we shouldn’t vote to combat climate change just because glaciers are receding in North Cascades National Park.

We should act on climate to ensure supplies of fresh water are not overly taxed by humanity’s increasing demands. Who wants reliable access to clean fresh water? All of us.

We should act on climate to help reduce the spread of invasive species, many of which are finding easier footholds where ecosystems are already stressed and fragmented.

We should act on climate to prevent the loss of arctic sea ice, a habitat that helps cool the planet by reflecting sunlight into space, forms the basis of a complex polar food web, and is one necessary for the survival of polar bears.

We should act on climate so coastlines aren’t flooded by sea level rise.

We should act on climate to mitigate ocean acidification, which can impact marine food chains. A lot of us eat seafood and even if we don’t, we like animals that eat seafood (whales, bears, etc.). What would Katmai National Park, my favorite place, be without abundant salmon? An impoverished place, that’s what.

I could go on, but I think you get the point.

We have a moral responsibility to stave off the worst climate change impacts, because this is a human-caused issue. Collectively we can do it, but we have to take the threat seriously. We, as a nation, didn’t vote to combat climate change during the 2016 election. Thankfully, we have another chance now, but time is running out to slow and eventually halt what is one of the most pressing issues facing humanity. That’s why I’m voting for initiatives to mitigate climate change and only for candidates who take climate change seriously.

In Washington, Initiative 1631 would authorize the first carbon tax in the U.S. This is my ballot.

I’ve been fortunate enough in my life to explore active glacial environments in many parts of North America. In Katmai, I’ve walked on pumice-covered glaciers to reach volcanic calderas, numbed my feet in icy glacial runoff, and eaten freshly calved ice (if you’re wondering, it was clean tasting but a little gritty). In the North Cascades I explored the margins of the region’s still active ice. To find an advancing glacier in modern times, however, is rare. Melting glaciers are one of our most conspicuous symbols of global warming.

Glaciers have come and gone in the past, of course. I grew up in a region of Pennsylvania where Ice Age glaciers terminated their last advance, leaving behind eskers and sand quarries. I lived near Lake Chelan, a remarkable inland fjord carved by glaciers. Katmai was also completely overrun by ice. Modern glacial retreat is different though, because we’re the primary cause. Climate change isn’t a hoax or some deep-state conspiracy. It’s real, it’s here, and humans are causing it. There is no scientifically plausible alternative theory that explains the changes to Earth’s climate observed since the Industrial Revolution.

No one – NO ONE – has been able to explain how increasing levels of CO2, CH4 and other heat-trapping gases would NOT raise the temperature of the planet. Yet that must be done first, if we are to consider any other sources as "dominant".

I still find beauty in the ice, but each time I see a glacier I also am reminded of one of Aldo Leopold’s many maxims,

“One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise.”

The community is not well, because we’ve wounded it. Let’s step up and act. When you vote, only vote for those who take climate change seriously and, more importantly, will actively work to reduce its impact. The status quo got us here, but the status quo is no longer good enough.

Despite the area’s formidable topography, the North Cascades are filled with lakes. On a hike late last summer, I glimpsed how many of them formed.

Monogram Lake sits in a small basin perched a few thousand feet above Cascade River. At this elevation, just shy of 5,000 feet above sea level, it’s surrounded by blueberry meadows and scattered woodlands of mountain hemlock and Pacific silver fir. It’s an inviting place to camp for a couple of nights, no matter if you want to lounge by the lakeside or strengthen your quads further by climbing to the surrounding ridges.

I hiked there late last August hoping to watch black bears feeding on blueberries. The blueberries were reaching peak ripeness when I arrived, but I found no black bears or even any fresh bear sign, so instead of relaxing at the lake I decided to explore the surround terrain and take in some of the iconic alpine views that make the North Cascades so famous.

Not having a specific destination in mind, I was free to wander. These are my most favorite hikes, when I travel more to see what might lie in front of me instead fixating on a pre-determined destination.

Bushwhacking around the lake, I passed through quiet sedge-filled wetlands…

…stopped frequently to eat blueberries…

…wandered over a gently sloping boulder field…

…to a glacier tucked in a pocket just south of Little Devil Peak.

Here, I ate my lunch while contemplating the scene. It was a near perfect analog for the formation of the Monogram Lake basin.

Glaciers form when snow is compressed into mostly air-free ice and attains enough mass to deform and flow. Under the influences of gravity, ice deformation (high pressure within a glacier causes deeply buried ice to behave plastically), and lubrication from water at the its bed, glaciers move along the paths of least resistance. Due to their mass and size, they become powerful agents of erosion. They entrain rock, sand, and anything else as they flow. Forced along by moving ice, rocks at a glacier’s bed are especially erosive. Glacial erosion mills rock so effectively that much is pulverized into a microscopic powder called rock flour. This is the substance that gives glacial runoff it’s milky appearance and can color lakes turquoise.

Where ice had only recently receded at this particular glacier, the bedrock recorded plenty of evidence of the glacier’s past movement.

Many faint striations were scored into the bedrock near the glacier. The striations run roughly parallel to the hiking pole.

Chatter marks are small, crescentic grooves formed in bedrock by rocks frozen in ice. The rocks chip the glacier’s bed as they are forced forward. The convex face of the marks point in the direction of movement.

Since glacial erosion is most pronounced at a glacier’s base, if topography forces ice through a pinch point then it causes the glacier to carve the underlying land more deeply and quickly than at the glacier’s sides, a process called overdeepening. As ice retreats, overdeepened basins often fill with water. This is the origin of fjords and deep lake basins as well as cirques high on mountainsides.

Monogram Lake occupies a cirque, a half open and steep-sided valley or basin on the side of a mountain. Instead of a clear lake surrounded by meadows, it was once filled with ice just like the basin below Little Devil Peak.

Monogram Lake

The glacier south of Little Devil Peak as seen from an unnamed peak above Monogram Lake.

Uniformitarianism is a geologic principle that, in sum, means the key to interpreting the past is to understand processes that occur today. Excluding the three hydroelectric reservoirs in the Skagit Valley, glaciers carved the basins for nearly every lake in North Cascades National Park and Lake Chelan National Recreation area. Even though I wasn’t around to see Monogram Lake emerge in the wake of glacial retreat, all the evidence I needed for this process was right before me.

Last October I wrote, “There are small and fat bears, old and fat bears, young and fat bears, and just plain fat bears. But none, NONE I say, are as fat as 747.” A year later, 747 continues to demonstrate his survival skills and success at Brooks River. He’s big enough and fat enough to once again earn my official endorsement for Fat Bear Week 2018. 747 is titanic, a giant among bears.

Bear 747 is an adult male in the prime of his life. First identified as a subadult bear in 2004, he’s matured into the largest bear I’ve ever seen.

747 on July 5, 2018.

747 on September 10, 2018.

But don’t just take my word for it. Bear 747 is endorsed by several of his competitors at Brooks River.

“Look, we’re all fat right now, but no one is as fat as 747. Seriously, his belly nearly drags on the ground. Even I never achieved that level of pudge. “ Bear 410

“I keep my distance from him because I’m concerned he’ll roll on top of me.” Bear 68

“I’m still in awe of his size. Can he even dig a den big enough to fit within?” Bear 402.

“Even though I’m in the Fat Bear Week bracket, I still might vote for 747. It’s the logical vote. He probably weighs at least three times as much as me.” Bear 719

“747 is a role model of fat bear success. I hope to be as fat as him one day.” Bear 503

“I’m too hungry to comment.” Bear 480 Otis.

Many people who have observed 747 closely also agree with the endorsement.

Too much fat is unhealthy for humans, but fat is essential to the survival of brown bears. It is a savings account against famine. Without ample fat, bears do not survive hibernation. In spring, often a season of starvation for bears, females with cubs will metabolize fat into milk to nurse their growing cubs, and adult males will use their fat to fuel their pursuit of mates.

747 won’t be rearing any cubs next spring as male brown bears play no role in raising offspring. During a season when almost no high calorie foods are available to bears, 747 will use his fat to roam the landscape for mates instead.

Other bears might be more charismatic or tug on your heartstrings, but 747 truly is a giant among Brooks River bears. He deserves your vote for Fat Bear Week 2018.

My 2018 Fat Bear Week bracket predictions.

You are encouraged to vote for Brooks River’s fattest bear on Katmai National Park and Preserve’s Facebook page. Starting on Oct. 3, park rangers will post head-to-head matchups between well-known bearcam bears. The bear whose photo receives the most likes will advance to the next round, until one bear is crowned fattest bear on Fat Bear Tuesday, October 9th. Don’t forget to watch Katmai’s fattest bears on bearcam.

There’s a place along the Skagit River where I like to wander. Upstream and downstream, the river is lined with rural home sites, but in between there’s a small pocket of undeveloped land where relatively few people go. Compared to the wild lands surrounding nearby Mount Baker and the North Cascades, it’s a small area and nothing close to what most people would consider wilderness. A regenerating clear cut sits on a terrace above the water. Below it, the river flows through a shallow S-curve and a swampy area occupies the annual floodplain. Filled with a willow thicket, it’s a good place to hide, for me as well as many other animals.

I’ve made it a habit to explore the animal trails leading in, out, and through the floodplain. In the spring, when the water table is higher, Pacific tree frogs spawn in ephemeral pools. In fall, a black bear visits the riverbank to scavenge spawned-out salmon. All year, elk use it to move between pasture. I frequently see sign left by coyotes, and if I look hard enough I might be able to find the tracks and scat of bobcats. While I rarely see the live animals, exploring their haunts helps keep me connected to the other creatures that I share this place with. I have a spot within this area where I like to sit and listen, but sometimes the most interesting observations happen upon my approach and exit into this little pocket of wilder land.

Following an elk-maintained path down to the riverbank, I exited the forest onto a muddy side-channel, now mostly dry after a long, arid summer. The exposed mud and sand of late summer offer some of the best tracking opportunities of the year. I slowed my pace, eager to see which animals had moved through the area recently. In the semi-firm mud, I stumbled upon a set of feline tracks. The tracks were large, as wide as the palm of my hand with four clear toe prints. There were no claw marks and the sizable metacarpal pads were distinctively three-lobed at the base. These belonged to a mountain lion.Curious to know more about its travels here, I followed the tracks along the edge of the river. The cougar followed the same general path I would have to move upstream; it stuck to the mud and driftwood on the edge of the willows. From the additional tracks I was able to find, the cougar continued along the riverbank for another hundred yards before I lost the trail in the adjacent thicket.

Based on my completely unscientific survey of mammal sign in the surrounding few acres, elk seemed to be the most abundant large animal here. They left many sets of tracks that moved perpendicularly from the river and into the deep cover provided by the willows. Was the lion stalking potential prey, or was it simply wandering through? Could a kill site be nearby? My imagination ran with the possibilities, but the dense vegetation would effectively hide any further evidence of the lion’s travels—unless I was lucky enough to stumble upon more sign.

Discounting that possibility as too unlikely, I left the river by following a narrow elk trail lined with salmonberry. The trail led, in a convoluted manner, to my sit spot where I sat for while to jot a few written notes and listen to the forest.

To head home, I took a different yet familiar route along more elk trails. By this time, I wasn’t expecting to find any more sign of cougars (the duff was too well compacted and dry to hold their paw prints), but when I reached a fork in the trail I found evidence that at least one cougar had visited the area several times. Under low hanging branches of western red-cedar were four large scrapes. Each scrape was oblong and about a foot in length. Each had a small pile of debris at the base and three were accompanied by scat.

Mountain lions are reported to urinate when they make scrapes, but I couldn’t detect any strong urine odor despite kneeling down for a better waft. Evidently, the cougar had been here several times, but not that day and perhaps not even the past week. It looked to be eating well when it was here though. One pile of scat was sizable and reflective of a diet heavy with meat.

I found no other mountain lion sign that day, but the scrapes and tracks caused my mind to again race with the possibilities of its life here. Did it make a kill nearby? Or, was it merely using the heavy cover as a secure place to rest between meals? I left with more questions than answers. This mountain lion’s story might be missing some pages, but sometimes the finer details of a good tale are best left to the imagination.

While browsing a map of the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest, I spotted what appeared to be a little used trail in a tract of the forest south of Skagit River. I quickly assessed whether it was worthy of my short list for exploration: Is it interesting and is it within cycling distance? With an affirmative yes to both criteria, I set off with my bike, Rocinante, to Gee Point.

I pedaled about eight miles south on the usually quiet Concrete-Sauk Valley Road. Only slightly rolling, this road was a good warm up for the rest of the day, which I knew would require a lot of climbing. Upon reaching the Finney Creek Road, I began a slow ascent through a mosaic of forested land—fields of stumps in recent clear cuts, thick second and third-growth stands, and occasionally a pocket of old growth forest.

In contrast to younger forest, old-growth stands are characterized not only by large and tall living trees, but also by a complex, uneven canopy and a relatively high amount of dead standing snags and down trees. Even from a distance, the old-growth can be easy to spot once you learn to look for these signs.

Large trees with an uneven canopy reveal a stand of old-growth trees on the edge of a former clear cut.

Most of these old-growth trees were inaccessible from the road (perhaps the only reason they remain standing), but a few other giants were spared the chainsaw. Perhaps too dangerous to cut, or perched precariously on the edge of a cliff, or already dead, these trees stood as the last remnants of the forest that used to be.

A few miles up the Finney Creek Road stands a giant dead Douglas-fir tree. These trees remind me that, with the exception of fire-maintained prairies and frequently flooded areas, nearly all of the Sauk and Skagit river valleys were covered with old growth trees.

Specific trees, like Sitka spruce, along Finney Creek also indicated this was often a wet place. Sitka spruce is typically found in areas with cool summers and high rainfall.

The North Cascades, however, experience a bi-modal climate. Its cool, wet winters stand in start contrast to hot and droughty summers, and I was soon reminded of the region’s aridity even as I cycled underneath a thick canopy of needles. As the road transitioned between gravel and broken pavement, the dirt was so dry I kicked up a rooster tail of dust anytime I gained appreciable speed and each pickup truck left a cloud in their wake. (I saw about a dozen motor vehicles in this stretch of national forest. With the exception of one ATV, all were pickup trucks.)

By the time I reached FS Road 1720, I was within a few miles of Gee Point, but I still had most of the climbing ahead of me.

It’s a lot steeper than it looks.

The road, now completely dust and gravel but pleasantly lacking washboards, switch-backed through young, even-aged trees as it gained elevation. The terrain was changing as I climbed and signs of winter’s harshness began to appear. I crossed through an avalanche chute at least three times, which gave me an excuse to stop and catch my breath as I admired the power of snow to snap trees in half.

Winter and springtime avalanches are a frequent occurrence in the North Cascades area, pruning any plant too tall or any too stiff to flex under their tremendous force. In summer, the brushy chutes are prime habitat for bears and I caught a glimpse of a black bear in this one.

The bright, hot sunshine and steepness of the road slowed my speed dramatically and I accumulated a sizeable escort of biting flies, but the views kept getting better, even with a slight haze from wildfire smoke.

To reach Gee Point though, I had to hike, so I locked Rocinante to a convenient fir tree at the end of the road and started walking. About a half mile in, I entered a beautiful, uncut forest dominated by large western hemlock and Pacific silver fir. At over 4,000 feet in elevation, which is not particularly high for the Cascades and in stark contrast to the tired burned out green of lower elevations, the forest floor had a noticeably fresh appearance.

Veratrum viride

Arnica cordifolia

The trail soon gained a ridge line and swung to the top of Gee Point where I was rewarded with a panoramic view.

The air, so calm and comfortably warm, easily could’ve induced a nap, but then I remembered that I was running low on water and time, so I reluctantly retraced my steps to the trailhead. After taking one final break to filter drinking water from Little Gee Lake, I bombed down the mountainside.

On the rapid descent, I was glad to have wide 700x38cc tires to handle the rough surface and working brakes to check my speed. The ride home was quick, taking me half the time to ride back compared to riding there. When I reached home, my lower legs were caked in a fine powder. They felt worked too, but it was a good kind of tired.

Late one evening at the end of June and about a dozen miles from Brooks River, I was lucky enough to see wolves compete with a bear for food along the middle reaches of Margot Creek.

At the beginning of the video, a blob in the middle of the creek represents the bear as it laid on the moose carcass. Two park rangers observed the same bear on the moose about seven hours before (no one witnessed how the moose died). When presented with a large animal carcass, bears will often bury it and/or sleep directly on it to protect it from other scavengers.

Not long after I started to watch the bear, a wolf emerged from the forest. It circled the bear, perhaps testing how tolerant or defensive the bear might be. Bears are quick, capable of outrunning any human, but they aren’t as fast as a wolf, and wolves know this. Therefore, the wolf was in little danger from the bear as long as it remained wary and stayed out of the bear’s reach. This didn’t stop the bear from charging the wolf several times though (only a few of which I was able to record). Despite the bear’s defensiveness, the wolf was persistent.

A bear defends a moose carcass by charging a wolf who approached too closely. Photo courtesy of Anela Ramos.

Soon after the wolf appeared, the bear left the carcass and a second wolf arrived. The wolves didn’t appear to be in sufficient numbers or aggressive enough to chase the bear away. Perhaps the wolves were enough of an annoyance that the bear was unable to rest or the bear could’ve been chilled by lying on the carcass in the creek for several hours. Whatever the reason, after the bear left for good the two wolves quickly began to gorge on the moose. They focused their efforts on the moose’s abdomen, thoroughly eviscerating it within fifteen minutes.

Two wolves tear into a moose carcass soon after a brown bear left it unattended. Photo courtesy of Anela Ramos.

Events like this happen in many places where wolves and bears share habitat, but in Katmai it might be more intense in spring and early summer before spawning salmon become abundant across the ecosystem. Bears often steal the show at Katmai, but wolves also prowl the landscape, following their own strategies for survival and sometimes competing directly with bears for food.

As many readers of this blog are aware, one of my favorite places in the world is Brooks River in Katmai National Park. There, about 300 miles southwest of Anchorage, Alaska, brown bears and salmon gather to create one of the most iconic scenes in America’s national parks.

Brooks Falls on a busy evening

I’m pleased to announce that through the generosity of explore.org, I’ve received a fellowship to work with Katmai’s bearcams, live streaming webcams of at Brooks River.

In conjunction with Katmai’s park rangers, I’ll write blog posts (which you can read on explore.org and Medium), chat frequently in the bearcam comments, and host live chats and play-by-play style broadcasts. I hope to make time to write about my other explorations on this blog as well.

Bearcam season is almost upon us. Webcam technicians are at Brooks River now, upgrading the webcams for a better live cam streaming experience. The first sockeye salmon should arrive at Brooks River in a matter of days and the bears will arrive soon after. This will be an exciting summer, so please join me here and on bearcam.

Salmon remain the ecological and cultural heartbeat of Bristol Bay. This mine will create billions of tons of semi-fluid toxic waste, which must be treated and prevented from entering the watershed indefinitely. Impacts from development are never completely restricted to the development’s footprint either. Roads fragment habitat and vehicle traffic displaces wildlife.

When I was born, Pacific and Atlantic salmon fisheries in the Lower 48 states were already significantly degraded. Nearly 40 years later, many salmon stocks in New England, California, Oregon, and Washington remain threatened or endangered. Only a small fraction of fish return to these areas compared to historic levels. I’m not about to let this story repeat itself in Alaska, nor should you. If the mine is developed, future generations will inherit its legacy, and I predict they won’t look upon us fondly for repeating the same mistakes that killed salmon runs in the past.

Please comment during the scoping period on the Army Corps of Engineers’ Pebble Mine Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) and send those comments to your congressional representatives as well. Below you’ll find my scoping comments for the proposed mine. Feel free to copy and personalize them as you see fit. State your concerns now, so when the Army Corps of Engineers writes the EIS it will fully evaluate the mine’s impacts. Don’t let Bristol Bay’s salmon disappear because of our lust for copper and money.

Comment to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (submitted May 23, 2018):

The proposed Pebble Mine and its associated infrastructure poses a substantial threat to salmon and wildlife across the Bristol Bay region. Pebble Mine will straddle the watershed divide between two of Bristol Bay’s most important salmon spawning and rearing areas. I remain very concerned with the mine’s potential to negatively impact the area’s fisheries and wildlife through its wastewater, tailings, and infrastructure.

The EIS must answer one question: can Pebble Mine be developed without significantly degrading water quality and fisheries? The Corps’ has authority to deny permits under section 404 of the Clean Water Act if a proposed action will significantly degrade water quality and fisheries. This EIS should evaluate and quantify, not just identify, the mine’s potential to significantly degrade water quality and fisheries over short and long-term timespans. The EIS can begin this evaluation by appropriately defining its purpose.

A recent environmental impact statement from the Army Corps of Engineers, the Donlin Mine EIS, merely stated the purpose of the mine and the Corps’ authority to permit it (Donlin Mine Final Environmental Impact Statement – Chapter 1, pg. 1-4, 1-6). The purpose and need of the Pebble Mine EIS should be not be to simply define the project’s purpose (to mine ore) and define the Corps’ regulatory authority. It should be, as I propose, to:

Identify the short-term and long-term ecological effects of the proposed Pebble Mine,

Evaluate the mine’s and its infrastructure’s impacts on wildlife, including fish, in order to

Determine whether the mine’s safeguard can prevent all degradation to water quality, salmon habitat, and wildlife habitat indefinitely.

Even at very low concentrations, dissolved copper is particularly toxic to salmon, interfering with their ability to navigate and avoid predators. Its effects can manifest over minutes or hours and persist for weeks (Hecht 2007). Can the mine’s wastewater treatment plan adequately remove dissolved copper and prevent it from entering the watershed?

The mine’s tailings also pose a great risk to fish. Any accidental discharge from the pyritic tailings ponds will significantly degrade salmon habitat. Open pit mines, even within the United States, have a poor record containing their toxic tailings. Most tailings dam failures occur at operating mines and 39 percent of such failures worldwide occur in the United States, significantly more than in any other country (Rico 2008). Earthquakes and flooding hazards increase the risk of a tailings pond dam failure in the Bristol Bay region, and tailings ponds cannot be drained in the event of flooding or dam failure due to their toxic contents. The probability of a M8+ earthquake, for example, is low from year to year but remains real at any given time. Therefore, the EIS must also evaluate whether the tailings ponds can be engineered to withstand the greatest potential earthquakes and floods expected over the next several thousand years.

After the mine’s 20-year active phase, the mining company proposes to store toxic pyritic tailings indefinitely under water in the former open pit. This seems to create the potential for acid mine drainage to leach into the watershed over hundreds or thousands of years. What geologic studies suggest this is a feasible long-term plan to store the tailings? Even if subaqueous storage in the former open pit prevents the tailings from oxidizing, what safeguards will prevent dissolved copper and other toxic metals from entering groundwater to eventually oxidize and acidify as it nears the surface in a different part of the watershed?

The mine’s supporting infrastructure also creates risks for salmon and wildlife. Although salmon can navigate and migrate through streams with high sediment loads, they do not spawn in these habitats. Erosion of sediments into streams can irritate the gills of fish, smother eggs, alter feeding habitat for salmon fry, and bury spawning habitat. The effects of road construction and vehicle traffic (estimated by the mining partnership to be 35 round-trip truck trips per day) on wetlands and fisheries should also be evaluated.

The road servicing the proposed Amakdedori Port and the port itself will fragment what is now an unspoiled region of coastline on Cook Inlet. McNeil River State Game Sanctuary is one of the most important brown bear refuges on Earth, home to the largest annual congregation of bears yet observed. The road and port have the potential to displace bears moving to and from the McNeil River and Katmai National Preserve areas. Frequent work and dredging at the port area will also displace wildlife in an area that now experiences very little human activity. Other alternatives to transport ore should be evaluated.

Finally, the EIS needs to address more than the 20-year operational phase, because the mine’s waste legacy will threaten salmon for thousands of years. Tailings stored in the former open pit won’t become benign in the near future and wastewater must be treated indefinitely. Also, the possibility of an expanded mine operating over a long time frame increases the threat to salmon, other wildlife, and clean water.

Combined, the Nushagak and Kvichak rivers support about 40% of Bristol Bay’s sockeye salmon. In 2017 alone, over 56 million sockeye salmon returned to Bristol Bay and over 19 million returning to Nushagak River, the largest in the river’s history. Salmon fishing in Bristol Bay is a billion dollar industry. While commercial fisheries generate the bulk of the salmon’s economic value, the area’s tourism is almost entirely based on salmon as well. Bristol Bay is home to dozens of premier sport fishing destinations, which harbor abundant populations of rainbow trout, Dolly Varden, arctic char, northern pike, lake trout, and grayling. The Bristol Bay area also hosts some of the densest populations of brown bears ever measured. Salmon are the most important food source for these animals, and the vast majority of people who visit Katmai National Park come to watch brown bears (Strawn 2015). After spawning, dead salmon fertilize the ecosystem with nutrients derived from the ocean, boosting the productivity of otherwise nutrient-poor area.

Considering the overwhelming economic and ecological value of salmon to the Bristol Bay region, Pebble Mine could displace thousands of workers and tourists if its safeguards fail to protect salmon. Without the energy and nutrients provided by consistently large runs of anadromous salmon, Bristol Bay’s freshwater and terrestrial ecosystems will quickly transition from one of richness to poverty. In many ways, this cycle is a positive feedback loop. The productivity of the area is reliant on large runs of salmon.

We’ve seen, repeatedly, salmon populations in the Pacific Northwest and New England decimated by habitat loss and pollution. Now we’re on the brink of repeating the same mistake in Bristol Bay. Pebble Mine should not be developed. It’s in the greatest interest of Bristol Bay’s fishing industry and culture, watersheds, salmon, and wildlife for the Corps’ EIS to fully evaluate the mine’s near and long-term effects. A failure to contain the mine’s toxic tailings and wastewater would directly impact two of Earth’s most productive salmon producing watersheds. The EIS must address potential groundwater exchange in the abandoned open pit, and whether the mining company can eliminate the risk of acid mine drainage. It must address whether the embankments for tailings ponds can withstand high magnitude earthquakes. It must address whether it’s even appropriate to build a mine whose wastewater will need to be treated indefinitely. It also must critically evaluate the mine’s supporting infrastructure, as it will potentially disrupt the world’s largest seasonal congregation of brown bears. In sum, the EIS must evaluate a worst-case scenario for salmon and other wildlife, since the possibility can’t be completely, or even reasonably, eliminated.

Addendum: My comment was apparently too long for the Corps’ comment portal on the Pebble EIS website. So if you use my comment in full, you might receive an error message. To work around it, you can attach the full comment as a PDF or Word document.

Recently, I found myself in the middle of an insect apocalypse as honeybees swarmed into my neighborhood.

“Mile by mile, city after city, it moves; leaving in its wake a path of destruction.”

Well, the event wasn’t quite like that, but I was still fascinated.

Swarming is a normal behavior for honeybees. In spring, when food is abundant, a colony may outgrow its home. Workers begin to produce new queens and the old queen departs with up to two-thirds of the colony. These swarms can contain thousands of individuals.

The swarm departs the old hive before they’ve found a new home. While scouts search for a suitable site, much of the swarm forms a cluster around the queen. This is when honeybees clump en masse.

Scout bees dance after they return to the swarm to communicate the direction and distance of potential home sites. Based on the vigorousness of the dance, the swarm then decides collectively on where to make their new home.

Unfortunately, I missed my opportunity for a bee beard, as the swarm had already found its new home by the time I saw it. The bees were just beginning to settle on the tree and move into the cavity between the fused trunks of two western red-cedars. As if queuing up to enter a stadium for a sporting event, the bees landed on the tree trunk and crawled inside. After a half hour, almost no bees remained outside the cavity.

The swarm moves into the tree cavity. At this time, most of the bees are still outside it.

Fifteen minutes later, most of the bees had entered the their new hive site.

Standing near the tree in shorts and t-shirt, bees flew all around me, yet only one made a mistake and ran into me (I wasn’t stung). While swarming, honeybees aren’t concerned with protecting larvae or honey stores. They’re concerned with finding a new home. As long as I didn’t make any aggressive attempts to disturb them, I could watch them quite safely.

Now I have some new neighbors. Thankfully, I don’t think they pose a threat to nuclear power plants.

Last June, I wrote about cycling to Rainy Pass on the North Cascades Highway. For half the year, however, this road is closed as snow accumulation and avalanche danger, especially, become too great to keep it open. On weekends in spring, when road crews pause their work to clear snow and avalanche debris, the highway opens to bicyclists, so last Friday I took a rare opportunity to ride a car-free road. I found springtime fully fledged at low elevations in the North Cascades and winter’s legacy still holding a firm grip on the high country.

At low elevations, near the town of Newhalem, the weather and vegetation reflect mature springtime conditions. Hummingbirds seek nectar from red-flowering currant, deciduous plants are nearly fully leafed-out, and the ground is snow-free.

Red-flowering currant (Ribes sanguineum)

Heading east through Ross Lake National Recreation Area, the road climbs most steeply where it skirts the three hydroelectric dams on the Skagit River. Even here, at elevations below 1000 feet, avalanches will sometimes crash across the road when winter conditions are right.

…I reached the Ross Dam trailhead where the highway remained closed to cars.

Freed of the stress of close encounters with cars, cycling on car-free roads is wonderfully relaxing. Even as I remained reasonably alert for hazards and other cyclists, I was able to do stupid things I’d never try when sharing the road with motor vehicles—like riding down the centerline while recording video.

For me, the car-free environment also promotes stopping where anything catches my attention. Ascending higher into the mountains, I watched as the vegetation became less and less green. From a certain phenological perspective, I was moving backwards through time. By the time I reached 2,500 feet in elevation, most of the raucous birdsong of the Skagit lowlands disappeared and deciduous plants were just breaking bud.

Big leaf maple has already finished blooming at low elevations along the Skagit River, but it was still in full flower around 3000 feet in elevation along the highway.

Around highway mile 150, about 15 miles beyond the gate at Ross Dam and 4,000 feet above sea level, snow continuously covered the ground. It only became deeper as I pedaled farther. Just a couple of miles shy of Rainy Pass, where state road crews had halted their work for the week, snow remained five feet deep on the road.

The end of the plowed road on May 4, 2018.

As it melts, the snow provides much needed water to streams and rivers in a mountainous region where summer drought is common. For many plants though, the deep snow hinders growth well into summer. On the day of my ride, temperatures hovered in the 60s˚ F, certainly well within the temperature tolerance of plants in the Cascades, but the deep snow keeps the underlying soil cold and dark. Under these conditions, most plants have to lie dormant until growing conditions improve. In the North Cascades, where snow accumulation is so deep and extensive, this set of conditions creates a perpetual spring season on the margins of the snow pack. This gives wildlife like deer and bears the opportunity to eat young and nutritious plants through July and August.

Yellow avalanche lilies (Erythronium grandiflorum) are currently blooming in the Diablo Lake area. More commonly associated with meadows at higher elevations, these perennials have a short growing season. They begin to grow from a perennial bulb as soon, and sometimes even before, snow cover melts away to take advantage of ephemerally moist soils. By late July, the soils where this specimen grows will have become powdery dry, but at higher elevations this species will still be in flower.

Late last July, long after I began to feast on blueberries at low elevations, blueberry plants in a snowy portion of Pelton Basin has just begun to leaf out. Late season berries are an important food source for bears this area.

Even during this ride into the middle elevations of the North Cascades (the highest non-volcanic peaks here top out over 9,000 feet tall), it was easy to see how snow exerts a significant influence on the landscape. The week of my ride, road crews reported nine feet of snow at Rainy Pass (el. 4,855’). In a couple of months, when tender plants like yellow avalanche lilies have withered and dried at lower elevations, I can ride up here again and find a microcosm of spring along the edge of the remaining snow.